Planning Your Vegetable Garden – Purchasing Seeds

Welcome to the fourth installation of the Planning Your Vegetable Garden Series. Today we will talk about finding and ordering your seeds or transplants. Yesterday we discussed actually planning your vegetable garden using the garden planning tool. Now that you have your vegetable garden all planned out, and you have the plant list that was provided with the GrowVeg.com planner, it is time to start finding and ordering the seeds you need to grow in your garden.

Searching For Seeds or Transplants

You have a beautifully organized and information-packed garden plan. It is now time to start assembling the seeds for all those vegetable plants. Right now is the time you should begin ordering and receiving seed catalogs so you can place your orders. Fortunately most seed companies take orders from their websites, which makes ordering quicker and much easier. If you are one of those gardeners that enjoys sitting by a cozy fire, snuggled up to a few seed catalogs, then perhaps ordering the catalogs is more your style. For this I have assembled links to some of the most used and trusted seed companies. The links I am providing are for ordering seed catalogs, but you can also browse the online catalog as well.

You should be able to find everything you could possibly want to grow in your vegetable garden from these 15 catalogs. Take your time browsing through the catalogs, and place your orders so that you will receive it by sowing time. If you have a favorite seed company or seed catalog that I did not mention, please mention it in the comments below and I’ll add it to the list!

Some Advice On Transplants

There are some companies that offer transplants by mail, but do not usually begin shipping those until April or May, depending on which zone you live in. The best thing to do if you are planting your garden using transplants is to wait until it is your outdoor planting time, and purchase them from a reputable garden center or nursery. I like to be able to examine the transplants first to make sure they are healthy before purchasing.

Your Vegetable Garden Plan Is Almost Complete

You have found out what a garden plan is, gathered information in order to plan your garden, created a nice garden plan that includes a plant list, and now you have begun researching and ordering your seeds for the garden. Following these steps should give you a good garden planning system that has worked well for me through a number of seasons, but we are not finished yet. There is still one final step we should take in the process. Tomorrow I will discuss this final step, so please join me then, won’t you?

If you missed the other installments to the Planning Your Vegetable Garden Series, you can view them here: